


A Date With A Haint

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [84]
Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A la Sherlock Holmes, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Ghosts, M/M, Tony and Steve Are Supernatural Detectives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 02:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15305415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: “Let me get this straight,” Mr. Stark said. “You have a ghost?”“No, I don’thavea ghost,” Peter said, affronted. “It doesn’t belong to me. That’s absurd.”





	A Date With A Haint

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Ghosts. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).
> 
> Bonus MM for today because I am dreading work tomorrow and wanted to cheer myself up.

“Let me get this straight,” Mr. Stark said. “You have a ghost?”

“No, I don’t _have_ a ghost,” Peter said, affronted. “It doesn’t belong to me. That’s absurd.”

Mr. Stark sat back and folded his arms. “All right. Then how would you describe your relationship to this supernatural phenomenon? In precise terms this time, if you please.”

Peter fidgeted with his hat, turning the battered brim in his fingers. Did his best not to catch the moth holes with his nails. “The thing is following me, sir. Like it’s a dog and I’m its master.” He flushed, felt his throat turning scarlet. “At college, here in town--even at my aunt’s house near Coventry. Wherever I am, whenever I lay down my head, the damn thing appears.”

Mr. Stark chose not to comment on the profanity. “Has it hurt anyone?”

“Hurt?”

Mr. Stark stirred the air with his hands. “You know, attempted to strangle or left bruises or thrown wardrobes across the room, that sort of thing.”

“Uh, no. No, sir. Nothing like that.”

“Hmm. Does it feel malevolent? I mean, does it make you feel malevolent when it’s around? As if it’s anxious to do harm.”

“No.” Peter stared at the man opposite him, open horror hanging on his face. “Do they--is that the sort of thing that ghosts do?”

“Generally,” Mr. Stark said breezily, “yes. They rarely show up to throw birthday parties, you know. Much more likely to lark about trying to get you to throw yourself of a bridge.”

The hat fell from Peter’s hands and hit the oriental rug with a soft _swack_. He seemed hardly to notice. “But why? Weren’t ghosts people once?”

“That is the general operating theory, yes. Something akin to Christian notions of the soul. However, I’ve always thought that--”

Peter cut him off. “So why would they want other people to die?”

Mr. Stark smiled. “My dear boy: because the ghosts can no longer live. Why should any of us, then, have that privilege?”

Peter’s face was like foolscap: transparent and on the very verge, it seemed, of tearing. “Sir,” he said, his voice choked with emotion, “then you have to make it go away, make it leave me alone. I don’t want to die.”

“And I’ve no intention of allowing that to happen.”

Peter reached out and clasped Mr. Stark’s wrist, a grasp that was clammy, that shook. “Please,” Peter said. “Whatever you can do.”

Mr. Stark looked down at the young man’s hand and then back up into his terrified face. “Write down your address for me, there’s a good chap. There’s paper and a nub of pencil beside your chair. Yes, just there.”

When it was done, Mr. Stark folded the page carefully, let Peter see him do it, and placed the square inside his coat, in his breast pocket. “My colleague and I will be there this evening. A little before sunset, I should say. Perhaps a little after, depending upon the trains. But rest assured we shall be installed before your head finds your pillow, all right?”

“Thank you,” Peter said, fervent. “Mr. Stark, sir. Thank you.”

Mr. Stark showed him to the door and waved him out onto the landing. “I’ve not done anything yet,” he chided. “Save your thanks for when your nights are quiet again.”

Peter bobbed his head and scurried down the stairs, his countenance a hundred times lighter than it had been an hour before.

Mr. Stark, on the other hand, his shoulders were heavy, for he could hear familiar footsteps descending towards him from above. Familiar, disapproving footsteps that could only belong to one man.

“Ah,” he said before Rogers could speak, “my dear friend and colleague. How fortuitous that you should arrive. We've a case.”

“So I saw. The young man with the battered hat and the shiny cuffs? Are you taking on charity work now?”

“Pfffft.” Mr. Stark stepped back inside his rooms, waited for Rogers to follow. “So unchristian of you, Doctor.”

“No,” Dr. Rogers said. “Not unchristian. Logical. Your half of the rent is due in a week and as it stands, there is no way you can pay it.”

Mr. Stark went for the breakfast tray, for his eggs and bacon that had, sadly, grown quite cold. The tea was all right, though. “Have you been snooping in my accounts again? Tsk. I did ask you not to.”

“Then you shouldn’t leave your bank book on the nightstand, dearest. It does give one the impression that you want me to look.”

“Me?” Mr. Stark raised an eyebrow and reached for the toast. “Really, Doctor Rogers. You know me better than that.”

Rogers laughed, a smile breaking through his straw-colored beard, and Mr. Stark could not help but smile back. The man had that effect on him. Always had, since the day he’d answered Mr. Stark’s ad for a flatmate some three years hence, though Mr. Stark saw no reason to tell the doctor that; his ego was quite large enough as it was.

“You could simply have asked me,” Rogers said. “You could have said, ‘Steven, my angel, could you spot me my rental payment this month? Something’s come up.’”

“Sometimes,” Mr. Stark said through a mouthful of cold bread, “there are things on which it’s more important to spend money than on my own comfort. Or yours, for that matter.”

The doctor plucked the toast from Mr. Stark’s hand and kissed his jam-sticky fingers, each in turn. “I know,” he said gently. “But if paying for someone else’s rent, or a month’s worth of coal, or a trip to hospital means that you can’t afford your own housing, then perhaps you should reconsider. Or at least talk to me first. Your instincts for kindness, darling, often white out your head for good sense.”

Mr. Stark lifted his head and laid his mouth over the doctor’s, a short kiss, but sweet. “You worry too much.”

“You don’t worry enough.” A hint of teeth, of tongue, a broad span of hands across Mr. Stark’s back, nails catching at the brown dressing gown. “It balances out, I think.”

“You,” Mr. Stark said after a very pleasant interlude that ended any hope of breakfast being viable, for in their fervor, they’d turned the tray onto the floor, “need to go pack a bag.”

Dr. Rogers nuzzled the soft scrape of Mr. Stark’s neck. “Hmm? Why is that?”

“Because we’re taking the 2.20 to Oxford from Paddington. We have a date with Mr. Parker’s haint tonight, my dear.”

“A ghost? Was that what he was so upset about?”

Mr. Stark petted the doctor’s golden head. “It was.”

Rogers gave a great sigh. “No werewolves or vampires, then? Not even a zombie?”

“Not this time, I fear.”

The doctor stood up straight and smoothed out his waistcoat. Shook out the wrinkles Mr. Stark had clutched in his coat. “Well then,” he said, disappointed. “I suppose that I shan’t bring my gun."


End file.
